Tag Archives: Social media

The Pros and Cons of Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the social media channels businesses cant make up theirNetBase have prepared a pros and cons list. Pro: its very popular in the USA, especially among women. Con: its a timesuck. Pro: it looks clean and is easy to use. Con: the technical issues. Scroll down and see for yourself if you think Pinterest is worth including in the marketing mix.

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Social CRM Adoption Expects Growth

Adoption of social customer relationship management (CRM) systems is low among marketers, but it will grow quickly. This became apparent from a recent survey monitored by Awareness released in September 2012; a significant proportion of respondents are planning to use a system by the end of this year. Only 16% of the respondents said they are currently using a social CRM system, but another 21% plan to do so. 17% claim to be unfamiliar with social CRM, while 46% simply do not use a system. Adoption is higher among respondents with social media marketing budgets of more than $100,000: 44% of this group have adopted social CRM, and another 26% plans to do so by the end of the year.

March 2012 findings from Nucleus Research suggest that social CRM boosts sales productivity by 11.8%. 21% of social CRM users reported sales productivity improvements of more than 20%, and a further 37% cited productivity gains of 10-20%. Read More

How Marketers Manage Social Media

The fact that businesses are flocking to social channels is no surprise, but in their rush to set up Facebook pages, Twitter and Google+ accounts, how many have thought about how best to manage these communities long term? faced with a barrage of tweets, comments and likes, how many companies are really geared up to manage social media strategies?

Thats what content management provider Episerver asked themselves when they surveyed 250 UK marketing professionals, asking them how they incorporate social media in their marketing strategy. Because:

Social media marketing ushers in a brave new world where the old one-way marketing techniques of the past no longer apply and where content marketing and community management reign. It’s not enough to simply monitor these channels; there is a need to pro-actively use them in a measureable way to show ROI.

The results show that social is here to stay. Over three quarters (77%) of businesses use social media in their marketing mix. While 22% of companies have a designated social media manager, twice that number (40%) do not have anyone in charge of social media. Social media activities are mainly managed by the marketing department (28%), followed by IT (16%) and PR (14%) departments. Only 3% of businesses choose to hire an external agency to deal with their social media activities which, according to the report, shows the companies willingness to communiate directly with their customers.

Facebook (65%) and Twitter (60%) are the most popular channels, appeared from the survey. But while a quarter of companies manage more than one account on each, adoption of centralized dashboards is still very low: only 6% indicated they use such a service.

As for the effects of social media, almost 30% of respondents said they noticed increased customer loyalty and 31 named increased customer engagement as an effect of the use of social media. A quarter of respondents said it had increased traffic to their website, and 21% ascribed and increased turnover to social media.

Episerver offers some advice for starting social media managers:

  1. Identify the metrics and goals of your social media strategy. Set clear expectations on KPIs (e.g. customer service metrics, sales metrics, engagement metrics).
  2. Listen where does your target audience converse already?
  3. Create a content plan offer value to draw people in.
  4. Choose your content wisely content sparks conversation.
  5. Engage, learn and re-evaluate constant engagement is crucial in social media.

The full research is available here. . .

Businesses Hesitant to Use Pinterest

Creative Group, the specialist recruitment firm, discovered that just 7% of companies are actively utilizing this service.

Elsewhere, a further 10% intended to start doing so in the future, while 17% were aware of the site but proved hesitant about its potential benefits from a company perspective. An additional 44% of the sample displayed no interest in using Pinterest, and 18% had never even heard of the rapidly-growing social media property.

The research did, however, reveal differences in attitude depending on the size and type of organisation concerned. As an example, advertising executives at larger agencies were more active on Pinterest than their peers representing smaller agencies and their corporate marketing counterparts.  Read More

One Million Fan Rube Goldberg Machine

Kudos to the makers of this commercial. UK deodorant brand Lynx (Axe to the rest of the world), usually known for its sweaty ads featuring bewildered boys who become irresistible after using the stuff, has made an inventive video to celebrate their one millionth Facebook fan.

The clip shows an inventive Rube Goldberg machine, featuring references to previous ads and campaigns. It took three weeks to build and 58 takes to get the sequence right. (For the uninitiated: Goldberg machines are those things where you drop a marble, which knocks over a set of dominoes, which knocks a billiard ball in a fishbowl, and in the end it sets off some fireworks Yes, those things.) And ok, the payoff off the machine features a boy who becomes irresistible after using the deodorant, but there has to be some brand consistency. .

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Brands Seek Proof for Facebook ROI

Brand owners such as Unilever, Ford and Coca-Cola are still attempting to fully prove the payback from using Facebook, but remain confident in the potential it provides to engage consumers. Recent research by Facebook covering 63 ad campaigns found a majority yielded three times the original expenditure, whereas only a single case delivered a return below one times the initial outlay.

A campaign run on behalf of Suave, the beauty range manufactured by fast-moving consumer goods group Unilever, generated $8.41 for every dollar spent, according to these figures. Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever, told the Wall Street Journal this return on investment (ROI) was impressive, but warned Facebooks journey had just begun:

As a businessman and marketer, ultimately, you care about ROI. At the end of the day, you will get the early adopters of the large companies who can see [Facebook] as a big trend but you wont get sustained businesses without people understanding how ROI is concerned. Read More

IBM State of Marketing 2012

IBMs new survey of the marketing industry finds that chief marketing officers (CMO) and chief information officers (CIO) must join forces in order to connect with today’s consumer across new channels including mobile devices and social networks. Fully 60% of marketers point to their lack of alignment with the companys IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching todays consumers.

One key new finding of the survey shows that with mobile marketing working well, marketers are now preparing to go beyond coupons and deliver mobile advertising that reaches customers on their smart phone and tablets. According to the study, 34% of respondents stated that in less than 12 months, they intend to deliver mobile ads, the highest rate of new marketing tactic adoption in the five-year history of the study. Overall, 46% of respondents are currently using mobile web sites followed by 45% mobile applications, up from 40% and 44% respectively since last year. Read More

Social Media Chaos

Luma took a crack at bringing all the different programs, websites and apps involved in social media together. If marketers feel a little lost at times when confronted with social media strategy and campaigns, here is why. Digital marketing is confusing, even if you have a software system to manage it.

Bonus points if you can spot which social network is missing from the chart!*

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*Solution: Pinterest.

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Twitters Got a Brand New Bird

Trouble keeping up with your own companys constant re-branding? Rely on Twitter to give you a little extra work. The microblogging site has updated their logo. Before, the site carried multiple logos: the little bird, the lower case t, as well as the full name of the site in that particular Twitter typeface. From now on, however, the bird is the only symbol of Twitter. The logo has been streamlined and is based on three sets of overlapping circles (representing interlinking social networks). On the company weblog, the rebranding is described somewhat circularly as:

 Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter.

Visit the Brand Guidelines page for some more information on how to display the logo on your website and marketing content. Twitter would like you to use it in exactly the right way. .

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Picking the Social Consumers Brain

Weve analyzed the brain of the marketer before, concluding that marketing is both an art and a science. Creating great campaigns and ads requires the creativity and inventiveness that the right brain half harbors, while marketers also need the analytical skills that reside in the left brain for the operational and data side of marketing.

But what about the consumer? This infographic picks the brain of the social shopper it identifies the six psychological principles that underlie online buying behaviour: social proof, authority, scarcity, like, consistency and reciprocity. Some of these principles apply to marketing in general, others are specific to the new, social, form of marketing. Click the image to explore the mind of the social consumer.

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